There is a wonderful time-honored story that many of you will remember, but I don’t think you’ll mind hearing it again. Some of our young people may not be familiar with it. It’s truly a golden oldie. It’s about a country preacher who announced that on the following Sunday he would preach on the story of Noah and the Ark. He gave the scriptural reference for the congregation to read ahead of time.
However, a couple of mischievous boys in the church noticed something interesting about the placement of the story of Noah in the Bible. So they slipped into the church and glued two pages of the large Bible in the pulpit together.
On the following Sunday the preacher got up to read his text. He was reading, of course, from the King James Version of the Bible. “Noah took himself a wife,” he began, “and she was . . .” He paused for a moment as he turned the page to continue . . . “she was . . . 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits high.”
He paused, scratched his head, turned the page back and read it silently, turned the page and read again, “she was . . . 300 cubits long, 50 cubits wide and 30 cubits high.” He still didn’t realize that two pages of the Bible had been glued together. Finally he looked up at the congregation and said, “I’ve been reading this old Bible for nigh on to fifty years, but still there are some things that are hard to believe.” (1)
Well, I’m going to confess that there are times when I agree with that old preacher. There are some times you read things in the Bible that make you scratch your head. A good example is the narrative in Mark 3 concerning Jesus’ uncertain relationship with his family. We read in verse 20: “Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat . . .” Now listen to this, and remember Mark is talking about Jesus: “When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, ‘He is out of his mind.’” That’s Jesus they’re talking about, and these are his mother and brothers doing the talking.
If you were a writer of a Gospel trying to convince people that Jesus is the Messiah, why in the world would you include the notion that, at the very beginning of his ministry, Jesus’ own family had questions about his sanity?
Matthew and Luke, who incorporated much of the same material as Mark in their versions of these stories, have nothing to say about this alleged rift between Jesus and his family, although the writer of the Gospel of John confesses, “For even his own brothers did not believe in him” (John 7:5). Saying they didn’t believe in him sounds a whole lot better than saying, “They thought he was out of his mind.” Why would Mark include this story?
It was bad enough, as Jesus became more popular with the common folk, that the religious establishment was growing in its opposition to him. In fact, in this story some teachers of the law have come down from Jerusalem to accuse him of being possessed of the devil. That’s an interesting statement. Jerusalem is to the south of Capernaum. We would expect that Mark would say “they came UP from Jerusalem.” But remember that Jerusalem sits on a mountain and Capernaum is near sea level, so technically the teachers of the law had come down from Jerusalem. Of course Jerusalem was also the seat of ecclesiastical power for Jewish believers, so theologically one might be on safe ground to speak of these ecclesiastical luminaries as coming down from Jerusalem. It’s a small point but I am trying to make sense out of this passage. And it is quite jarring to think that Jesus’ own family was questioning whether he was out of his mind. So, why would Mark include it? There are some possibilities that come to mind.
First of all, Mark mentions it because it really happened. There are many cynical people today who think a lot of things in the Bible were made up by the writers of scripture. If so, these writers did a pretty poor job of it. If there was some kind of conspiracy on the part of early Christian historians to say things about Christ that were not so, don’t you think they would have tried to reconcile their various stories? Even an event as entirely critical to the Gospel message as the story of Christ’s resurrection is told from several different points of view.
Don’t you think that, if they were trying to fabricate the story that is the linchpin for all that is unique about the Christian faith, that they would have ironed out the wrinkles and made the narrative flow seamlessly so that no one would ever question its authenticity? Instead the story is preserved in a jumble of eye-witness testimonies that agree only on the most important fact--that Christ certainly was resurrected from the grave--but give different accounts of how that truth was discovered.
We live in a time of fake news and “spin,” perpetrated by slick communicators who make sure they get their narrative straight and in agreement with others who are spinning the same story before it is presented to the public. It is particularly humorous to watch reporters trying to get at the truth with politicians who answer with the party line regardless of what they are asked. It would be humorous if it wasn’t so sad.
The writers of the Old and New Testament were simple folk who simply reported what they had seen and what they had heard. They weren’t trying to get the facts to fit their biases. They were reporting on facts as they truly perceived them. Sure, eyewitness accounts differ. That’s one thing you can always count on. If several people describing the same scene use exactly the same words to describe that scene, they’re probably reading from a script. In other words, they’re probably lying. That qualifies as fake news for sure.
The first reason Mark tells us about Jesus’ problems with his family is that they really happened. After all, Jesus’ teachings were hardly orthodox. If he simply taught what all the other rabbis were teaching, why would he bother to come into this world in the first place? Even those who loved him thought his teachings were a little extreme.
And we need to remember that Jesus never got all starry-eyed when he talked about family. Remember how he said to one man, “Follow me.”
But the man replied, “Lord, first let me go and bury my father.” Jesus said to him, “Let the dead bury their own dead, but you go and proclaim the kingdom of God.”
Wow. That’s kind of brusque.
Still another said, “I will follow you, Lord; but first let me go back and say goodbye to my family.”
Jesus replied, “No one who puts a hand to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God” (Luke 9: 59-62).
Later he puts it even more starkly: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters--yes, even their own life--such a person cannot be my disciple” (Luke 14:26).
There was another occasion when Jesus’ mother and brothers came looking for him. “Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked.
Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3:31–35).
Can you imagine that Jesus’ family might have taken some of his teachings personally? How would you feel if you were in their place? All families have issues. There are no perfect families.
In fact, that may be the second reason Mark mentioned the problems Jesus had with his family--to emphasize that there are no perfect families. The Bible is very open and direct about the difficulties of family life. Think of the stories that grace its pages--Cain and Abel, Jacob and Esau, Joseph and his brothers, Think of the troubled marriages--Abraham and Sarah, Hosea and Gomer, David and his many wives. It is very difficult to find an example of an ideal family in the pages of the Bible. However, all that changed with the coming of Jesus. That’s one reason Christians made such an impact on the society of their time. In spite of some of Jesus’ rather radical teachings, the early Christian community took marriage and family life very seriously. Obviously that was because of their association with Jesus. They knew that Christ was not anti-family. He was simply pro-kingdom of God. He knew that if you sought God’s kingdom first, everything else--including your family life would fall in place.
The Romans were infamous for their lack of marital discipline. As someone has put it, “The Romans shared nothing . . . but their wives. Christians shared everything . . . but their wives.” The Christian community affirmed the dignity of women and even children when many non-Christians cast their family members aside with little thought to their well-being. Thanks to Jesus, the early Christians were radically pro-family.
Here’s something for you to think about: Bruce Wilkinson of Walk Thru the Bible” Ministries suggests that today’s church may be more like the pagans than the early Christians. He says, “The church, reflecting trends in society, no longer takes marriage as seriously as God does!” He quotes a law professor who points out that it’s easier in this country to walk away from a marriage than from a commitment to buy a used car. Most contracts, he says, can’t be unilaterally abrogated, but marriages “can be terminated by practically anyone at any time, and without cause.” And even Christians are bailing out by the thousands. (2)
That, too, is sad. You know the statistics. A recent study reports that the majority of elementary school children today will live in at least three different families before finishing eighth grade. That includes family of origin and families with step-parents.
A divorce is granted every 26 seconds in our land. Slightly more than half of all marriages, and nearly 60% of all remarriages end in divorce. I’m not trying to make anyone feel guilty. Some of you are victims of a marriage breakup. You may still be going through a period of grief over a walk-a-way spouse. God hurts for you. And there are many reasons for divorce. There are many forms of spousal abuse. Nevertheless, the situation is reaching crisis proportions. This is one situation where the church cannot sit on the sidelines. But it is true: No there are no perfect families.
The third reason that Mark may have mentioned the conflict between Jesus and his family is to set the stage for what happened to his family in the aftermath of Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection.
According to Mark 6:3 and Matthew 13: Jesus had four brothers: James, Joseph, Judas, and Simon. He also had sisters, but we do not know their names or how many there were of them. [Our Roman Catholic friends believe these were Jesus’ stepbrothers and stepsisters, children of Joseph by a prior marriage. That, of course, might have explained a lot.] We do not know what was the real source of their unhappiness with Jesus. We do know it is sometimes those closest to us who have the greatest difficulty seeing our worth. That may be so in your family.
I wonder if Mary and Joseph ever told Jesus’ siblings the stories of Christmas, of the angel’s visitation or the wise men or of the angels singing in the heavens. Perhaps they decided that it would only cause confusion in the minds of the other children, maybe even resentment, as in the story of Joseph and his Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. In any case, his siblings did not immediately embrace the idea that Jesus was the Messiah, the one for whom Israel had been waiting for hundreds of years.
I mention that because there is a psychologist at Emory University who made an interesting discovery. He says it is important for us to tell our children stories of our family. He and another psychologist at Emory asked children to answer 20 questions about their families, questions such as ‘Do you know where your grandparents grew up?’ Do you know where your mom and dad went to high school? Do you know about an illness or something really terrible that happened in your family? They then compared the children’s results with a battery of psychological tests the children had taken and reached an overwhelming conclusion: The more children knew about their families’ histories, the stronger their sense of control over their own lives, the higher their self-esteem, and the more successfully they believed their families functioned. (3)
Maybe Mary and Joseph made a decision not to tell Jesus’ siblings about the wondrous events surrounding his nativity. Or maybe they did tell them and they reacted like Joseph’s brothers in the Old Testament story who sold Joseph into slavery.
Whatever the background of this story of Jesus’ family’s embarrassment over his ministry, that makes it even more thrilling to read in Acts 1:12-14 that on the day Christ ascended to be with his Father, “the apostles returned to Jerusalem from the hill called the Mount of Olives, a Sabbath day’s walk from the city. When they arrived, they went upstairs to the room where they were staying. Those present were Peter, John, James and Andrew; Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew; James son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James.” Now listen to the next verse: “They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers.”
Something had obviously happened in this family that had been torn with so much conflict that they tried to take Jesus home and deny him of his ministry, something that made them change their minds about his teachings.
In fact, we later learn that these same brothers became quite important in the history of the early church. According to tradition Jesus’ brother James was the leader of the church in Jerusalem and the author of the book of James. He is sometimes referred to as James the Righteous to distinguish him from James the Apostle. His brother Jude is credited with writing the book by the same name in the New Testament, though this is a matter of controversy. (4)
But what a wonderful turn of events. The same family members who had earlier thought he was out of his mind had become a part of the family of faith. Why? Because it all really did happen--Jesus’ amazing but unorthodox ministry, the strife with his family, his crucifixion by the religious authorities, and most important his resurrection from the grave. It all really happened. The early Christian writers didn’t try to get their stories straight. This was not fake news. Jesus, king of kings and Lord of Lords, is risen from the grave. If you doubt it’s true, ask any member of his family.
1. Loyal Jones and Billy Edd Wheeler, Laughter in Appalachia (New York: Ivy Books, 1987).
2. https://bible.org/seriespage/lesson-33-why-we-have-family-problems-genesis-161-6.
3. Reader’s Digest (Reader’s Digest USA).
4. Kirk H. Neely, https://kirkhneely.com/2014/02/16/the-life-of-jesus-jesus-and-his-family/.